Dear Professor: Emailing in The Academy

When you think of college writing, what genres come to mind? Essays? Lab Reports? Proposals? Whatever popped into your head, it probably wasn't email. That's unfortunate because emails are one of the most commonly used forms of writing in the academy (and beyond). Most studies on the subject focus on emails in the corporate world (where workers spend a whopping 28% of their work time managing emails), but a quick, wholly non-scientific survey of my own inbox shows that I wrote 41 school-related emails last week.

Unfortunately, few students learn how to craft an appropriate email--even though lots of students could stand a lesson in netiquette (a blog post on the subject by EIU English professor Dr. Michael Leddy has drawn more than 400,000 readers from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe!).

I have my own thoughts about how to email professors (don't use emoticons. because: obvious), but I thought I'd ask a few experts. To that end, I chatted with Dr. Tim Taylor, Associate Professor of English and Director of Composition at EIU, Dr. Sandra E. Weissinger, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and  Dr. Natalie T. J. Tindall, Associate Professor and Co-Graduate Director in the Department of Communication at Georgia State University (whose twitter feed, incidentally, is all types of interesting). Here's some of their advice:

Use appropriate titles.

Many professors bemoan the epic of informality among today's students. All three of the academics I interviewed touched on this issue: Dr. Weissinger included "when students misspell my name or call me 'Miss', 'Ms.' or 'Mrs.'" on her list of top 3 email pet peeves; Dr. Tindall explained that she asks for the "extra formality" of being called Professor or Doctor because she is not much older than many of her students; Dr. Taylor's email policy, which he includes with his syllabus and course policy for all courses he teaches, asks that all messages begin with a formal address.

OMFG, y'all. Stop with the textspeak. Ur teacherz don't LOL.

There is a tendency for students to include casual internet abbreviations in messages to teachers. Perhaps it's rooted in the same informality that leads students to write emails without a formal address or salutation or maybe it's, as Dr. Taylor argues, related to the tendency of some people to "think of email as the same as texting their friends." Either way, it's a problem. Dr. Tindall's advice? "Emails are professional communication tools, and you should spell out everything you write." Kthnxbai.

And while you're at it, check your address.

Your email address reflects on your image as a student (arguably a type of semi-professional), so be sure to keep that in mind when you communicate with professors. I mean, do you really think your comm teacher is going to seriously consider a request for extra credit when it comes from bigbootyjudy35@hotmail.com (Dr. Tindall's example, not mine)? Dr. Leddy explains that using your university email, in addition to ensuring the expected amount of professionalism, "immediately lets your professor see that your email is legitimate and not spam."

Be specific!

All three of the professors I interviewed also noted that they expect students' emails to provide all the specific information that is necessary for the message to be read, understood and, if appropriate, responded to. This means wisely using the subject line and giving your full name, course number and section and, if applicable, the name or page numbers of any assignment or reading you're asking about. This isn't just about etiquette; it's about efficiency. As Dr. Weissinger explained "I have many students. So, when students do not note which class their email concerns (in combination with non-specific questions), I am lost - and often do not have time to figure out what class they are in, as I am often five minutes ahead of my students in terms of class preps and grading."

And while you're crafting that specific question, stop for a minute to decide if you need to ask it at all. As a TA for a first-year writing course this semester, I've become pretty salty about how many emails I get asking me questions that students should be able to answer on their own (when's the assignment due? How 'bout you look at the schedule posted on D2L... on the internet... that you're using right now to send me this email). And for the record, I'm not the only teacher who doesn't want to answer these types of questions; Dr. Weissinger included when students ask "a question that is answered in class documents (for example, the syllabus)" as her #1 pet peeve.

Keep it simple, stupid.

The best emails are short and to the point. "Emails are more inviting and easier to read when they are 'chunked,' meaning that in an online platform, strong communication is likely to have shorter paragraphs than academic essays," Dr. Taylor explains. "The medium affects the arrangement and form of the message." Dr. Tindall, who follows this website's advice for 90% of the emails she writes, agrees: "I hate long emails. HATE THEM." If a longer message is absolutely necessary, Tindall recommends using white space and bullets as tools for chunking.

The pudding's in the proofing.

As with any good writing, emails require proofreading. Consistently incorrect spelling and punctuation make messages harder to read--and can make readers quite cross. Save yourself (and your audience) some frustration and give your words a quick once-over before pressing send.


Feeling a little overwhelmed? Don't worry. More responsibly using electronic communication, while it might appear daunting at first, doesn't really take all that much work. Plus, it adds to your own efficiency. Including course numbers in your subject lines, for example, makes searching your own inbox much easier. And there's the bonus of knowing that your professors will be better able to answer whatever questions you have (and in a better mood when they do) if your messages are clear and concise. And don't feel like you're alone; Dr. Leddy and each of the professors I spoke with all pointed out that, just like their students, they work to follow their own advice.

It's a jungle out there; write accordingly.

Elegant Solutions for Mythical Fussbudgetry

Close to a year ago I wrote at length about three instances of grammatical "rules" I describe as "mythical fussbudgetry":

• Myth 1: Don't Start Sentences with Ands or Buts
• Myth 2: Don't End Sentences with Prepositions
• Myth 3: Don't Use They as a Singular Pronoun

Today in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Anne Curzan addresses Myth 3 with her blog post "Singular 'They': A Footnote."

Curzan offers a solid solution for people who want to use they as a singular pronoun: "I tell students that they are welcome to use singular they  in writing for my class, but they should footnote it the first time they use it and in the footnote explain their rationale for using singular they. And students do, both in my class and in other classes (for other classes, I tell them they’re allowed to end the footnote with an invitation for the instructor to contact me with any questions). This footnote accomplishes at least three things: It shows readers that the author is consciously making a choice to use singular they; it informs readers about legitimate reasons for using singular they, even if they disagree with its use in this context; and most importantly, it asks students to be careful, self-conscious writers, reflecting on and explaining their choices in their writing."

Curzan's proposal reminds me of a recommendation from one of my mentors in graduate school, Dr. Ralph F. Voss. In class one day, he told us that if students want to create intentional fragments in their papers for whatever reason, to indicate they did this consciously, students can just put "fi" in parentheses after the intentional fragment (like in a citation system), which stands for "fragment intended."

If you're someone like me who wants to get rid of the silly "rules" above, you and your students can use footnotes to signal these word choices and constructions were conscious choices.

Elegant solutions from Voss and Curzan (fi). 

More on Quotation

Last week, I posted about the fallacy that results when someone quotes another person out of context. This week I'm going to write about the Fallacy of Selective Quotation. 

One of the things that I've learned as my ability to assess arguments has improved is that the relationship between fallacies and immorality is not always so clear cut. Because some fallacies are hidden in a long chain of abstruse reasoning, they are not always intended to mislead a reader. 

Sometimes a person might commit a fallacy and not even know it. This is part of the reason that rational people come together to debate or argue, either through conversation or epistle: aside from persuasion, they want to test the cogency of their own reasoning chains. 

Some fallacies, on the other hand, seem obviously immoral. Ad hominem attacks, for example, certainly seem immoral to me. Attacking a person with insults instead of criticizing his argument just seems wrong, doesn't it?

In a similar vein, I think that most people immediately recognize that selectively quoting a person's words in a fashion that is disingenuous or deceptive is immoral. Part of this recognition, I imagine, is the indignation we all have presumably felt when our own words have been bowdlerized and abridged to convey false meanings to another party. In other words, we know how frustrating it is to have our language and our beliefs misrepresented. This frustration makes us sympathetic to other victims of misrepresentation, especially misrepresentation of an egregious variety. 

To take an example, let's look at the following hypothetical:

"Although I grant that hydraulic fracking can be lucrative, in many cases to families that are basically impoverished, and that it can also make plausible the possibility of an energy independent America, which would have hugely beneficial consequences, both geopolitical and economic, I still can't support its widespread implementation. There are simply too many environmental risks, in particular the risk of groundwater pollution."

Suppose this paragraph comes from a highly respected geologist. Now suppose, an advocate of hydraulic fracking reasons in the following way to support an argument in favor of hydraulic fracking.

"Even  world famous geology scholars support the increased use of hydraulic fracking in America. In fact, one of the most respected geology scholars in the world published an article recently that confirmed the 'lucrative' benefits of it. This same geologist went on to claim that widespread increase in  '[hydraulic fracking] can make plausible the possibility of an energy independent America' and that '[an energy independent] America would have hugely beneficial consequences, both geopolitical and economic.' These are not my words but the words of a world famous geologist. I think I can rest my case here. Increasing hydraulic fracking is a policy that Americans should support." 

Notice how the statement "I still can't support its widespread implementation" got omitted from the advocate's argument?

Since he quoted from other sections of the geologist's statement, the advocate would have known that the geologist ultimately stands against the policy of increasing the amount of hydraulic fracking. Why does he selectively use the geologist's words? 

Obviously, he wants to make his argument stronger by using the geologist's authority. 

However, his selective use of quotation is certainly fallacious and probably immoral.  

When you quote another person, part of what you are doing is representing their beliefs. In the example above, the geologist believes that the environmental risks of increasing hydraulic fracking outweigh the economic and geopolitical benefits of it. 

Yet the advocate quoting the geologist gives readers the opposite impression. 

It is a form of contemptible deception.  

We must avoid such tactics. 

Indeed, logic, to say nothing of morality, demands that we do so.    

Back to Gula

Using Robert J. Gula's Nonsense Red Herrings, Straw Men and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language as my guide, I've spent much of this semester blogging about fallacies. Occasionally, I've deviated from this topic, but for my final posts of the semester, I've decided to return to it. 

Of all the fallacies that you will encounter in college, none of them seems as obviously immoral as the ones associated with quotation. Gula identifies two such fallacies. For the sake of simplicity, I'll refer to these as the Fallacy of Quoting out of Context and the Fallacy of Selective Quoting.

In this post, I will address the Fallacy of Quoting out of Context. In my next post, I will focus on the latter. 

When you take a first-year composition course, you learn about the importance of proper citation. You learn the difference between a quotation and a paraphrase. You learn about the severe academic consequences of plagiarism. 

But aside from the academic consequences associated with using another person's words or ideas without including an adequate citation, are the moral consequences of using another person's words in a deceptive fashion, all the while still following the protocols of an acceptable citation system.  

I'm sure most of us would readily agree with Gula when he writes, "Quoting out of context can turn a person's words against him" (92). 

The indignation you feel is particularly intense when something you said or wrote is taken out of context in order to convey an attitude or behavior that you neither expressed or performed, is it not? Sometimes, if what you said or wrote is quoted out of context, it can be misrepresented to such an extent that it conveys a meaning which is opposite the meaning you actually articulated. To illustrate this fallacious tactic, let's look at the following example. 

Suppose you overhear a roommate whom you don't particular care for say the following sentences. 
"Let's steal the final exam. All we have to do is get the flash drive she keeps it on. She'll never know."

Sounds fairly incriminating, does it not? 

If his words are quoted verbatim, then it seems like the roommate is conspiring to commit academic fraud.  If a professor or an administrator were to ask you whether your roommate ever planned on committing academic fraud, you could think back to these sentences and say: "Yeah, I heard him discussing it with my own ears. One morning I heard him say, 'Let's steal the final exam. All we have to do is get the flash drive she keeps it on. She'll never know.'"  

But suppose you also know that your roommate is an aspiring dramatist who writes and rehearses his plays in your living room. Suppose further that you also know the plot synopsis of his most recent play: a group of students plan to steal a final exam and tragedy ensues. 

You've heard of the colloquialism that distinguishes between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law? 

Well, here we have a situation where a conflict arises between the letter of meaning and the spirit of meaning. According to the letter of meaning, your roommate intends to commit academic fraud. According to spirit of meaning, your roommate intends to develop an interesting dramatic plot. To interpret correctly the meaning of his words requires the appropriate context. To ignore or suppress this context would distort your roommate's meaning in a rhetorically significant situation--the situation being the hearing on whether your roommate ever plotted to commit academic fraud. 

To quote someone out of context is not an act of plagiarism; it is, however, a fallacy, thus it should be avoided.     

Critical Thinking and Assumptions

In the middle of last semester, I had an interesting conversation with another writing consultant. The topic of our conversation was the difference between an assumption and a presumption. Although when I check The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, it does, in the second entry, give assumption as a synonym for presumption, when philosophers make arguments, assumption is the term of choice. 

Most of you probably have a colloquial sense of what an assumption is, indeed, most of you have probably been warned about the dangers of assuming anything. When you make an argument or when you assess an argument, you should probably avoid relying on your colloquial intuitions. 

Assumptions can be true or false; they can be strong or weak. They will be found in almost every argument you will ever encounter. Thus, while making an ass of oneself and others, could on many occasions result from making a naive assumption, it certainly is not inevitable.  

What is an assumption? 

This was the question put to me by the other writing consultant. After thinking back to my Logic 101 class, my response was the following: "An assumption is an unstated premise." Fairly simple, right? 

We know that in college classrooms "argument" does not mean "screaming match" or "fight." Rather, when you make an argument for a class, you conclude something on the basis of evidence and good reasoning. The premises are used to support the conclusion. Sometimes, if the argument is sufficiently complex, you may have more than one conclusion. In such arguments, you may have a sub-conclusion that also a premise because it is used to support a main conclusion. So, premises support a conclusion, and an assumption is an unstated premise. 

To illustrate these abstractions, I'm going to refer to some of what I said to my writing consultant colleague. Before our discussion began, we had just noticed someone eating chicken soup in the graduate student office, at which point I said, "He must have a cold." My colleague confirmed my conclusion. "Yeah, he told earlier today that he wasn't feeling well."

This exchange, or an exchange very similar to this one, happens a million times a day. But what exactly are the rhetorical components that are important for critical thinking? There are premises and a conclusion, and of course, there are assumptions as well. To make the relationship between these entities explicit, let's look at the following schema.

Conclusion: "He must have a cold."

How did I arrive at this conclusion? Well, I saw the person in question eating a bowl of chicken soup. So let's make this premise explicit.

Premise 1: "He is eating a bowl of chicken soup."

At this point, something in the reasoning chain is missing. How do I connect premise 1 to the conclusion? There are many ways, but the most definitive would be to use the following premise. 

Premise 2: "If a person is eating a bowl of chicken soup, then he has a cold." 

Premise 2 is false, but it will help illustrate my point about assumptions. The point is that I didn't actually include another premise when I drew my conclusion. My argument, if I had written it down in standard premise and conclusion form would have looked like this:

1. He is eating a bowl of chicken soup.
2. Thus, he must have a cold. 

The consultant I was speaking with understood my reasoning chain without the additional premise. When I am speaking to someone in a colloquial manner, it would be awkward, not to mention cognitively problematic, to explicitly state every premise in every argument I make. For this reason, I, and basically everyone else in the world, will use a lot of assumptions when we argue. Let's include the assumption in our schema to reinforce this idea visually. 

1. He is eating a bowl of chicken soup.

Assumption, unstated premise: If a person is eating a bowl of chicken soup, then he has a cold

3. Thus, he has a cold. 

In many of the texts you read for your classes, the assumptions will be more controversial. Controversy can lead to emotion, and emotion can lead to a person wanting to make an argument appear more cogent than it actually is. 

If the writing consultant I was talking to had asked me to clarify my assumption, and if I had clarified it with premise 2, then my conclusion would not follow. I would need to modify my assumption in order to get a cogent reasoning chain. I might modify my assumption by making it more narrow e.g., "If a person is eating a bowl of chicken soup, then it is likely he has a cold." 

I might modify it by including more information in it e.g., "If a person is eating a bowl of chicken soup during the cold and flu season in Charleston, IL, then it is likely that he has a cold."

 An essential part of critical thinking is to ask yourself about the assumptions a writer or speaker makes. If a writer's or speaker's assumption is weak, then his conclusion will be weak. Keep this in mind when you analyze an argument.

Occam's Razor Continued

In this post, I'm going to give two more examples of Occam's Razor and how it functions in the world. Sometimes using it actually leads one into a false conclusion. Sometimes an inductive argument involves a chain of reasoning that creates a disagreement as to which conclusion is supported by it. In cases such as these, each participant in a dialogue or polemic or debate believes that his or her conclusion is made preferable because of Occam's Razor. Thus, Occam's Razor itself would need to be examined. 

For my purposes, we'll keep things simple. 

Many years ago, a movie directed by Robert Zemeckis was released in the United States. Castaway told the story of a Federal Express cargo plane that, after attempting to divert around a large storm, crashes in the middle of the ocean. Given the location of the crash and the nature of ocean currents, recovery of the wreckage would be difficult, while recovery of human remains would be almost impossible. 

Now in the movie, the audience stays with the character who survives not only the initial crash and sinking fuselage, but also luckily drifts into a land mass that can support his continued survival.  Because the camera remains with this character, we, the audience, know that he is still alive. But have you ever wondered what is happening to his family and friends who are back at home? Obviously, they are mourning, but it is important to ask: why are they mourning? Because they believe that someone they cared about died in a plane crash. Of course, we, the audience, know that the proposition:

There were no survivors in the Federal Express cargo plane that crashed into the middle of the ocean--is false.

Some of the crew did die. The pilot, for example, died and the co-pilot as well. They have families too. So let's think about how Occam's Razor might work to analyze these two different chains of reasoning. 

Premise 1. It is very very unlikely that any person could survive a plane crashing into the middle of the ocean.
Premise 2. The pilot in Castaway was in plane that crashed into the middle of the ocean. 
Thus,
3. It is very very unlikely that the pilot survived.

By applying Occam's Razor we should prefer the following conclusion. 

4. In fact, it is so unlikely that the pilot survived that as a matter of fact he did not survive. 

And it turns out that this conclusion: The pilot did not survive is true.

Occam's Razor leads us to a true conclusion.


Now let's look at a similar reasoning chain.

1. It is very very unlikely that any person could survive a plane crashing into the middle of the ocean.
2. The protagonist in Castaway was in a plane that crashed in the middle of the ocean. 
Thus,
3. It is very very unlikely that the protagonist in Castaway survived.

Now here things go against Occam's Razor. Remember Occam's Razor tells us that we should not multiply the number of causes to explain an effect, or to explain a data set, and that when one chain of inductive reasoning includes fewer un-evidenced assumptions than a competing conclusion, the former should be preferred. 

What un-evidenced assumptions do we need in order to move from #3 to the following:

#4. The protagonist in Castaway did in fact survive not only the initial impact of a plane crashing into the middle of the ocean but also the sinking fuselage. In fact, the protagonist in Castaway is alive four years after the plane crash because he washed ashore on an island that allowed him to procure sustenance and shelter. 

We would need a lot of un-evidenced assumptions to get there. But the story gets even more unlikely as the movie goes on. 

But let's just think about #4. Since empirical data has established that surviving a plane crash is very unlikely, the following assumption would be un-evidenced:

a: The protagonist in Castaway survived the plane crash. 

Since empirical data has established that surviving a plane crash away from medical care is even less likely than surviving a plane crash near emergency services, it would be even less likely that a person would survive a plane crash in the middle of the ocean. Thus, anyone back on land who concluded that--The protagonist in Castaway is not dead--would need another un-evidenced assumption, namely,

b: After surviving the initial impact of the plane hitting the ocean, the protagonist in Castaway did not suffer a severe injury that ultimately killed him. 

Then we would need another un-evidenced assumption, namely,

c: After not being seriously injured during the initial impact of the plane hitting the ocean, the protagonist in Castaway was carried to a land mass that included within it both food and shelter. 

The list would go on for maybe a hundred independent un-evidenced assumptions, and yet it does't affect the truth of the conclusion above. 

Now, most of us, if we were in the situation of the protagonist's family and friends would not believe assumptions a,b,c, etc. In fact, Occam's Razor forbids us from doing so. But unlike in the case of the pilot's death, using Occam's Razor for this reasoning chain would lead us to a false conclusion. 

Even though Occam's Razor is a powerful tool to assess the merits of competing inductive reasoning chains, it is not invariably reliable.  

Induction and Occam's Razor

When you make an inductive argument or you encounter one, what method do you use to decide whether to believe the conclusion it draws? This process of winnowing the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, happens automatically  when we walk to the store or cook our dinner. 

But when you need to assess two chains of inductive reasoning, each of which was produced by a reputable thinker and contain contradictory conclusions, the process of assessing the principles that both arguments employ becomes more important.

Generally, what inductive arguments are trying to accomplish is provide the best explanation for a certain data set. The data set could come from any academic discipline; it could come from our personal experiences of the world..

This data set could be statistical in nature e.g., American men between the ages of 45-49 suffer 28% more heart attacks than Japanese men between the ages of 45-49; it could be sensory in nature--sensory in many different respects, for example, during a trial a jury might here the following piece of data delivered by a defense attorney., "On the night in question, three independent witnesses testified under oath that they saw John Doe at the party when the crime was committed." Likewise, for a scientist, sensory data generated from an experiment needs to be explained: "Over the past five years, during my research in Madagascar on the ring tailed lemur, I have observed a decline in the number offspring produced each mating season."

The data set does not need to be what we might typically think of as a data set. 

Our personal experiences include an endless series of observations that we interpret in an inductive way. When I look out my window in the morning and see snow on the ground, I, assuming I have no reason to doubt the reliability of my sense of sight will instantaneously explain that sensory data in terms of temperature, i.e., it's cold outside. 

Why do I conclude that it is cold outside before I actually go outside and feel the temperature? Well, because snow is, generally speaking, frozen rain. And rain is water. And water is subject to the laws of nature. More or less, one of these laws of nature, dictates that water freezes at a temperature that I know from past experience is "cold."

Now, from a meteorologist's point of view, the sensory data of snow on the ground might involve a much more complex physical process, but despite the added complexity of his explanation, seeing snow on the ground, he too will conclude: it's cold outside.

So, continuing with our example, we have this set of data: I look out my window and see snow on the ground. I explain, in a basic and narrow sense, this data with the following conclusion: "It is cold outside." It all seems fairly automatic, no? But now let's complicate things. 

Suppose you have a roommate who is science fiction fan, suppose he just read a science fiction novel about an alien invasion of earth. Suppose he, upon seeing you reach for your galoshes, says: "What are you doing that for?"

You slide your eyes askance, and tilt your head as if aiming a weapon. Since you've already had your morning coffee, you decide to spare his life. "Well, uhhh, it snowed last night and I don't want my feet to get cold on the way to class."

"It's not cold outside," your roommate assures you as he digs into his bowl of Lucky Charms with a fork.

"No?" Have the folks at General Mills started adding something extra to their cereals?Magically delicious, indeed! "There's snow on the ground. But it's not cold outside?"

"Actually that white stuff on the ground only looks like snow."

You feel your eye begin to itch. "Huh?" 

You roommate sets his bowl on the counter top in order to gain access to a vaster array of gestures. "My theory," he whispers in conspiratorial tones, "is that last night. While we slept. An alien race, maybe from Epsilon Eridani, maybe from Gliese 876, visited the planet earth. What you see out the window is the evidence of their visit."

"Evidence? Of their visit?"

"Like the litter campers leave in Jellystone National Park. And its definitely not cold but has a temperature consistent with the ashes of dying campfire."

You consider correcting his malapropism directly but opt to murmur your correction as you search for your chap stick, " I thought Ranger Smith executed litterers." 

At this point, your other roommate walks in. You can't help yourself. "Tell him. Let's see what Mike thinks about our competing explanations."

It might not seem like it at first but Mike must now perform a detailed evaluation of two competing explanations. The first explanation concludes that the snow on the ground outside is frozen water and that frozen water requires a certain temperature. That certain temperature is felt by human beings as "cold."  

The second explanation concludes that the snow on the ground, despite its appearances, is not actually snow. It is litter left by a race of super intelligent alien beings. He further concludes that this litter is not cold but warm.

Why do I classify these two explanations as being in competition with one another? Well, because they both explain the data set and neither one involves a contradiction. After all, the roommates's explanation is possible, if it weren't possible, in a basic sense of the word then all those sci-fi movies that people love would not be so riveting. Think about it--has there ever been a movie about a person discovering a square with three sides? 

So, even though it seems counterintuitive, both explanations do in fact explain the data set. In other words, each explanation offers an answer to the questions: What is the stuff I see outside my window? and What caused it to appear? 

Now let's get back to Occam's razor (just so you know Occam's razor is also known as the law of parsimony). Here's how The Shorter OED defines it: "the principle that in explaining a thing no more assumptions should be made than are necessary." 

Now what does this actually mean for those of us who must act in the real world? When we must decide whether or not to wear galoshes or sneakers, shorts or pants, a skull cap or a baseball cap?

It means that we should prefer the first explanation not the second one.

Now investing the time to count the number of assumptions a particular chain of inductive reasoning uses can be a tedious process--unless you happen to be a philosopher, in which case the activity is considered an ideal Friday night--but in the example above we don't need to be overly scrupulous.  Take the following assumption (in logic an assumption is an unstated premise)

Assumption #1: There exists a race of super intelligent aliens.

The first explanation does not require the truth of this assumption. The second explanation does require it. Thus, in regard to Occam's razor,  the first explanation is winning: 0-1. 

Assumption #2: There exists a race of super intelligent aliens from Gliese 876 and Epsilon Eridani.

Assumption # 2 is different from assumption # 1, you see that right? After all, #1 could be true and #2 could be false. Thus, in regard to Occam's razor, the first explanation extends its lead 0-2.

Assumption #3: There exists a race of super intelligent aliens that litter.

0-3

Assumption #4: There exists a race of super intelligent aliens whose litter has an uncanny resemblance to frozen water that English-speaking earthlings have connoted snow

0-4

Assumption # 5: There exists a race of super intelligent aliens who would travel a long distance through space time for the purpose to silently drop its litter on another planet. 

Assumption #5 is tough even for the Klingon faction to believe. I mean surely if aliens visit us one night, the ruckus will disrupt our sleep. 

0-5. 

Okay that's a sizable lead. At this stage in the contest, Jordan can grab a towel and ice his knees.  

Both explanations have assumptions, but the roommate's explanation requires more assumptions, none of which, and this is key, none of which have any evidence to support their truth.  Now, of course, we know that an absence of evidence is not, logically speaking, the same thing as evidence of absence.  Every one of the roommate's assumptions could be true--even #5--but simply unknown to those of us on earth. 

But whether or not the assumptions could true or false is not the issue. 

The issue, according to Occam's razor, is that in the present moment we have no evidence to support any of those assumptions. Thus, when we evaluate the two chains of reasoning, when we examine the suggested explanation for each one, Occam's razor, provides a way for us to judge which is better, which we should believe. Sometimes Occam's razor is interpreted as a measure of simplicity. Such a conceptualization has some merit. When we look at the above example, one way to explain our preference for the first explanation is say "It is just simpler."  

Writing Process Q & A with Dr. Melissa Ames

I cannot help but find the ways that people write fascinating. 

What is especially interesting to me is how different the writing process is for everyone. For example: a friend of mine writes his introduction last because he says that writing the introduction last is the only way that works for him.

I, on the other hand, have to write the introduction first. Actually, sometimes I cannot write anything until I think of a snazzy title (and will sit paralyzed staring at the computer until the perfect title comes to mind).

So, I'm always asking people about their writing process, mostly because I am always up for good writing tips - and partially because I'm a curious bird. This curiosity led me to interview a faculty member in the English Department at EIU, Dr. Melissa Ames. 

What follows is a brief bio of Dr. Ames and her interesting answers to my boring questions.

Melissa Ames is an Assistant Professor at Eastern Illinois University specializing in media studies, television scholarship, popular culture, and feminist theory.  She teaches courses in these fields, as well as in composition and English education.  

Her work has been published in a variety of anthologies and journals, ranging in topic from Television Study, New Media, and Fandom to American Literature and Feminist Art.  Her most recent publications include her books Time in Television Narrative:  Exploring Temporality in 21^st Century Programming (2012) and Women and Language:  Essays on Gendered Communication Across Media (2001); articles in The Journal of Popular Culture and The Journal of Dracula Studies; and chapters in Grace Under Pressure: Grey’s Anatomy Uncovered (2008), Writing the Digital Generation (2009), and Bitten by Twilight: Youth Culture, Media, and the Twilight Saga (2010).

1.  What is the first thing you do when you sit down to write? Do you use an outline?

It depends on the project really.  As a graduate student I was a bit OCD about my pre-writing process:  I used to create an outline and color code it with markers/highlighters (one color for the intro, one for the conclusion, and different colors for various body sections); I would then go through all my printed off articles or typed up notes and then either highlight accordingly or put a little colored mark at the top of the document to tell myself it was to be used in a certain section (or sections).

Since then I’ve relaxed quite a bit in this regard.  I still often craft an outline by hand (one that looks scarily like the traditional five paragraph one with an inverted triangle representing the intro and squares representing body paragraphs and a regular triangle representing the conclusion).  I now don’t always write from start to finish.  I usually start by cutting and pasting material/quotes from typed up notes into the various sections and then writing from there.  I’m not sure which way is better, but there are certainly days when I feel like I was a better writer back when I was a grad student, so maybe I should revisit my colored pens!

2.  When you are writing do you take advantage of peer review opportunities?

I do participate in informal peer review quite a bit.  I have a writing partner (a former peer at Wayne State University where I received my Ph.D.) who usually serves as my second set of eyes for solo projects (and by default she is the second set of eyes on other projects because we often publish works together).  

Another one of my regular reviewers is actually a former graduate student of mine who is working on her Ph.D. at Illinois State University.  I’ve found that it is extremely useful to have a few people who I feel comfortable exchanging work with because they can then come at my work from different directions.  (I also find it nice to have a set of friends who know my work intimately). And, of course, I participate in peer review in more formal capacities.  Most of the work I have published goes through a peer review process, and I have worked as a manuscript reviewer for various journals and presses.

3.  What projects are you currently working on?

I am currently revising an article on contemporary dystopian young adult literature.  I have been fascinated with the popularity this genre has found throughout the last decade (more so since the release of Susan Collins’s Hunger Games series), especially because it coincides with a string of publications bemoaning the civic illiteracy of the millennial generation (publications like Mark Bauerlein’s  The Dumbest Generation).  

Being that these YA novels are packed full of socio-political commentary, it seems inaccurate to attach labels like “apathetic” and “apolitical” to teens who obviously have some investment in these topics (even if that investment is not always manifested through direct political action).

My other two projects are book-length manuscripts.  The first, Watching (and Feeling) the 00s:  Television & Affect Theory during the First Decade of the 21^st Century, studies the televisual trends of the so-called 9/11 decade (2001-2011).  I read various genre developments as reactions to the cultural moment (e.g. the escapism of reality television; the anger displacement of infotainment programs like The Daily Show; the ways in which network dramas remediate the trauma of the 9/11 attacks through various fictional stories focused on salvation, rescue, revenge, and so forth).  This work is also interested in how the technological developments of this past decade changed the televisual landscape resulting in new viewing practices (e.g. how fantasy football has changed sports viewership or how interactive fan websites have begun driving the development of certain programs).

The second book project I am working on with my co-author, Sarah Burcon.  Our book is titled Mediating Female Identity through (St)ages:  Popular Culture Depictions of Mating, Marrying, Mothering, and Maturing.  In this piece we analyze how popular literature, television, and film are depicting (and influencing) various “stages” of female development in productive and problematic ways. 

We hope for this book to be a crossover item that can be read by academic and lay persons alike, and it’s been a lot of fun to write.  We have chapters on the effects of pregnancy self-help books, motherhood memoirs, Hollywood romantic comedies as instructional “how to” date films, depictions of Brides/Bridezillas, and portrayals of menopausal women.  My favorite chapter by far, however, is on the creation and use of the terms Cougar, Puma, and M.I.L.F. – how these words are used by others to label women and how women have appropriated them at times for their own means.

4.  The work that you do seems, at least to me, to be cutting edge and ground breaking...always on the pulse of what is going on right now. Would you consider that true?

I wouldn’t necessarily call my work cutting edge or ground-breaking.  Like any scholar I often am midway through a project only to find that someone else has made a similar argument before.  However, my work is usually timely. 

Being a popular culture scholar means that you have to strike while the iron is hot or else you miss the window where your work is relevant.  It also means that publication delays can be quite frustrating.  (Case in point:  I have an article coming out next year in the Journal of Popular Culture that I’m quite proud of… but it’s on ABC’s Lost – a show that went off the air in 2010).   My work on post-9/11 media also always seems to be a race against the clock because I’m constantly waiting for it to become passé.

As for why this all interests me, well, I find it fun to mix work with pleasure.  The joke I always make is that I get paid to watch TV.  I also find popular culture to be a great way to reach my students so from a pedagogical standpoint I think it is great that my research can inform my teaching. 

My feminist media work is important to me because I am very invested in following Susan Douglas’s call to “talk back” to media and I feel that my gender analyses of various films, books, and television shows is a way to accomplish that.  My post-9/11 work interests me because I fully believe that cultural events influence cultural production and since 9/11 has been touted as the day that “everything changed” I like using it as a watershed moment for my analyses.

5.   What is your philosophy in regards to teaching writing?

I’m not sure I have a specific philosophy any more when it comes to teaching writing but there are quite a few practices that I value. 

I believe that students need opportunities to write A LOT and that the only way one improves as a writer is with practice, practice, and more practice.  (And with that practice should come feedback, feedback, and more feedback). 

As such, I probably assign more essays than the average instructor.  In my composition classes students usually write 8-10 essays and create a writing portfolio.  I also believe in revision (hence the writing portfolio), but because of my desire to have students write so many different essays, I often only have time for them to do an intensive, directed revision of one or two essays during a term. 

I believe in peer review and conferences, but I’m always wanting both to be more productive than they are.  I also value non-traditional writing assignments, such as multigenre research essays. 

All of the above probably seems to conflict with some of my practices and overall reputation as a writing instructor.  I am not opposed to teaching students the components of the dreaded five-paragraph essay (as I feel it’s just one more tool for their toolbox and a fine starting point for writers with very little experience). 

I am known to be a very hard grader when it comes to writing (and specifically MLA documentation).  I feel that since I give so many writing assignments, I can afford to push students harder early in the semester so that they can grow. 

As for my reputation as an “MLA Nazi,” I’m not sure where that stems from, but I really believe in teaching students to attend to detail – not because MLA specifically will necessarily benefit them later in their education or careers but because the skills are transferable to some degree. 

For example, once a student understands the basics of MLA, he or she can usually transition well into other documentation styles like APA.  Also, a person used to consulting a manual and attending to the details of page layout and such will benefit when transitioning to careers where he or she might be expected to conform to company-specific communication formats.

6.  Has your writing process changed since you started teaching?

I’ve been teaching for a while now so it’s hard to say.  I wrote more for fun before I was a teacher.  (I wrote four young adult novels when I was a teenager and a lot of angst-filled poetry and journal entries as a twenty-something). 

If my writing process changed as a teacher, it wasn’t for any philosophical reason but more so because my time was so much more limited.  (Teaching is always my first priority, followed by service, so sometimes my own writing projects land on the back burner).   If teaching had any influence on my writing I’m afraid to say it was a negative one.  Because I assign so many assignments, I don’t read nearly as much as I would like to.  When I read less (academically or for pleasure), my writing (and general vocabulary) declines.  Also, I’ve often joked that after years of teaching high school my spelling has never been the same.  (I won a spelling bee in fifth grade, but after years of grading poorly proofread papers, I sometimes look up the spelling of words like “the”…  Okay, it’s not that bad but you get the idea).  Still, none of this really answers your question about “process” I suppose!

7.  What is the best advice you have ever received in regards to writing?

Well, I’m confusing the advice I received with a Nike ad but the sentiment is about the same:  “just do it.”  Studies have been done that prove that people who write daily no matter what write more than those who wait for opportunities to write in large chunks. 

My natural inclination is to do the latter – to wait for the stars and the moon to align (and for children to be silenced and/or not present) so that I can spend a large amount of time delving into a writing project – but I’ve learned that I do seem to write more when I can make sure I’m producing writing regularly. 

That’s the number one reason why I just started my own television blog –  http://smallscreenscholar.blogspot.com - to force myself to write something once a week for public consumption.  (This allows me to justify the hours I spend watching television, to reflect on shows that don’t fit into my current writing projects, and mostly to just experiment with tone and simply form writing habits that deviate from my natural instincts).

8.  If you could write your memoir what would you title it?

I actually want to return to my creative writing roots in the future, and I’ve often played with the idea of creating a memoir spun from the 26 diaries I have filled throughout my life.  Since the bulk of these were written during my teen and young adult years, I’ve often thought the most fitting title would be:  The Memoirs of Melodramatic Me.  (This is also because I have an embarrassing appreciation for alliteration).  

9. Where do you foresee the future of the college composition classroom heading?

Right now multimodal composition is something that just happens in some composition classrooms in small doses.  I think in the future as more and more writing is housed on the web and more communication is relayed through non-print media that multimodal composition will be increasingly important to integrate into traditional composition courses not as a simple add on but as a key component of the course.

  Special thank you to Dr. Ames for entertaining my questions and providing me with such fantastic responses.

Induction and Writing Papers

In my previous blog post, I made a sincere, if imperfect, effort to draw some basic distinctions between deductive and inductive reasoning. Although deductive reasoning is an essential part of our cognitive framework, much of the reasoning we do when we write essays or research papers is inductive. A key part of completing many writing assignments, not to mention an infinite number of non-writing tasks, is to generate and defend conclusions based on the words or the testimony of an expert. 

Obviously, the concept of "expertise" is complex. When does a person become an expert in some field? How do we decide when to bestow that title on an "expert?"

To give an example of this complexity, consider the legal career of Thurgood Marshall. I would imagine that most people presume that a lawyer is an expert on the law because of the education that he completed. Colloquially speaking, the concept of "education" would basically reduce to the following two questions: 

"When did you graduate from law school?" 
"What law school did you graduate from?" 

Thurgood Marshall earned his Juris Doctor from Howard University Law School in 1933, graduating first in his class. He then went on to become the first African American appointed to The United States Supreme Court. It's an impressive resume, isn't it?

While every lawyer doesn't have such a sterling profile, most of us assume that a person who earns a Juris Doctor degree from an American Bar Association accredited law school is an "expert" about, if not the entire American Legal Code, then at least some particular aspect of it. One lawyer could be an expert on the criminal legal code; another lawyer could be an expert on the U.S. Constitution. Thurgood Marshall, being a Supreme Court justice, would be an expert on both the criminal legal code and on the U.S. Constitution.  

The point is that if I'm writing an essay in my composition class about the FCC and its policies toward censoring the f-word on the public airwaves, I would, if he were still alive, ask Thurgood Marshall for his assessment of the issue. The answers he articulates for me would provide a well-forged link in my reasoning chain. The link would be well-forged because, as an expert in the U.S. Constitution, Thurgood Marshall  would have knowledge about it that can trusted by all reasonable non-legal experts.

My reasoning chain might be constructed in the following way:

1. Some people believe that XYZ is true about the First Amendment 
2. Thurgood Marshall  believes that X is true and Y is true about the First Amendment, but he disputes that Z is true.
3. Thurgood Marshall is an expert about the First Amendment.
4. Thus, I have a good reason to doubt the truth of Z. 
 
In the same way that a lawyer is an expert on certain legal topics, someone with a Ph.D. in particular academic discipline would be an expert in that discipline. This is why many of your professors want you to consider the author of text when you look for research sources. The author of a book or the author of a peer reviewed academic journal probably has a Ph.D. in a particular field thus we can justifiably assume that he/she is an expert in that field. Appealing to that expert's authority to justify a conclusion is an acceptable way to construct a chain of reasoning. 

Complexity will almost always arise when you write a paper. For example, what happens when two experts disagree? When experts disagree, it actually allows you to carefully consider each person's position and then ask yourself which one is the more cogent. If you're writing a paper about Psychology, obviously the research (its methodology, for example) would be a good place to consider which expert you find more persuasive.

Of course, there are ways for a person to achieve expertise in a particular discipline without earning an advanced degree. For example, while a person could become an expert in journalism by earning a Ph.D in Journalism, there are many professional journalists who attain expertise on a topic by carefully researching a topic as an employee for a news organization like The New York Times or PBS.    

If a journalist from The New York Times  spends six months writing a series of feature length articles about the pros and cons of hydraulic fracking, many of us would justifiably consider that journalist, if not an "expert," then certainly someone who's opinion about hydraulic fracking is more informed, more nuanced than, say, the owner of my local Seven Eleven. 

The journalist's stories become reliable sources because of the expertise he/she has achieved.  When you write an argumentative paper, you might appeal to the journalist's authority about hydraulic fracking to make your case. When you appeal to a relevant authority in an argument, you are arguing inductively.   

All this talk about becoming an expert or achieving an expertise is relevant because most of our inductive arguments rely on the authority of experts. Much of the article by the journalist in The New York Times  will be quotes and paraphrases from experts in geology and petroleum engineering. The article will also probably include the testimony from people who've been deeply affected by agreeing to lease their land to a natural gas drilling company.  

In this sense, whatever the journalist concludes, his/her reasoning will be inductive in nature. 

Defeating My Arch Nemesis: Using Writing to Learn Math

When I was in first grade, a skinny six-year old sporting long piggy tails and buck teeth, I quickly learned that math was very hard for me.  Longingly I watched my friends go out for recess while I sat inside and attempted to fix the math problems I had done incorrectly earlier. I just couldn't do them right.

And when I couldn't do them right, my teacher would sit me in the corner. Humiliating. I was the girl constantly in tears in the corner, and the cute boy in class (who was a math whiz) thought I was some sort of weirdo (which I am....but still).

The experience created an instant mental math block that I have fought  my entire life. The rest of my grade school career was bleak in the math department, and I have to admit that I never passed a high school Algebra class.

When I started my college career at Parkland College, back in the mid-90s, I had to take basic math. I was not surprised and slowly worked my way up to beginning Algebra. The first day of my college Algebra class sent me into nervous fits. I felt like my six-year old self, only with straighter teeth and shorter hair.

I was determined to do better, and I only wanted to take this class one time. Due to the fact that I came from a large family with not so large of an income, it was up to me to pay for my schooling, and I knew that I did not want to pay to re-take an Algebra class. So, I had resolved to work my butt off and figure this whole math thing out even if it caused my hair to go prematurely gray.

I walked up to my professor before class, wish I could remember her name because she changed my life, and told her of my math woes. She smiled and nodded and asked me what my interests were. At the time my interests circulated around my boyfriend (so stupid!), but I managed to say something like, "Well, I really like English and Theater." She then told me that she had some tricks up her sleeves that could help me with my struggles, and we started class.

Well, I didn't believe her.

I had been told, by many teachers and tutors, that they knew exactly what to do to "fix" me and cure me of my math ignorance. So naturally I just took a deep breath preparing to weather the storm.

After my professor had handed out the syllabus, explained the schedule, and let us introduce ourselves, she dismissed the class for the day--then quickly asked me to stay for a few minutes. She told me that I would need a separate notebook for the class that would become my Algebra Writing log.  I looked at her like she was crazy.

She laughed.

"Kelly, have you ever done journal entry work in your writing or English classes?" she asked. I nodded yes and told her that journaling was one of my favorite things to do.  She then told me that I would be doing this for my homework and in-class activities.  My professor took out a notebook and showed me exactly what I would be writing in my log--it looked something like this:

• Date
• Topic or Chapter/Assignment Name
• Description of pages read in textbook, lecture notes, and in-class activity notes
• Main points from the section being assigned in a bullet point list
• Summary of main points from book/class written in paragraph form

Not only did she have me do this weekly math log, but she also assigned me paragraphs to write.  My professor would write an equation on the board each week, usually on Monday, and by Friday a paragraph was due to her that explained how to solve the problem and why I had decided to solve it in that way. 

I was kind of shocked that I was using writing do help me understand math.  I had never thought that "math" people wrote. In the article "Writing to Learn Mathematics" Bernadette Russek says, "Contrary to popular belief mathematicians must write and must write well...Writing is a valuable assessment tool. It is used to assess attitudes and beliefs, mathematics ability, and ability to express ideas clearly" (36).  Russek also suggests that writing is often used in the math department to "...open doors of communication with students who may have math anxiety or who have 'I hate math' feelings, students who have never really 'spoken' to their mathematics professors before" (36). 

I feel as if Russek might have been directing that last bit directly at me....

Thanks to my professor's willingness to use writing in the math classroom, I passed beginning Algebra with an A. The first A I had ever received in a math class my entire life. I'm still proud of that A.

I moved onward and upward and eventually managed to tackle a college Algebra class. I did not get another A, but I did get a B, and I was able to mark math off of the list of classes I needed to take to finish school.

I really, really, really wanted to take my passing math grades to my former first grade teacher and say, "HA! Take that! See! If you would have just been willing to teach me math in a language I understood, instead of sitting me in a corner, I would have been done with this a LONG TIME AGO."

I wisely did not do that, but man did I ever dream of it.

After I completed my general education requirements, I thought that I would never have to take a math class again. However, my children have proved me wrong (as they usually do), and I find myself helping them with their math homework. Unfortunately, my kids also struggle with math and I sometimes feel as if maybe I should not be the person helping them. 

It's kind of like the blind leading the blind.  So, we write about math. Each day we write out their assignment in paragraph form and then we talk about it and pretty soon those math problems are getting solved correctly. 

If you would like to read the rest of Bernadette Russek's article it can be found here.  As Writing Across the Curriculum becomes more prominent on college campuses and within K-12 curriculum, I'm sure that writing in the math class will be used more often.

EIU President William Perry has used writing in his math classroom, and in an April 2011 interview with the EIU Writes Blog writers (found here) Perry said that: "...mathematics has a language all its own, you all know; you’ve taken math, so you do a math homework; it’s one set of language. But now if you’re going to talk about how that relates to maybe football head injuries or supply and demand, you know these kind of things, you have to interpolate that for your audience. You have to convert mathematical concepts to plain English, and so that’s a valid exercise because I think in all of our lives, we’re always interacting with multiple audiences." 

To me multiple audiences means multiples discourses, which then equals various types of verbal and cultural languages. In a perfect world teachers will be able to teach in a method that answers the needs of all of their students, but that perfect world is more than likely not going to happen in my lifetime.

So, instead of waiting for that perfect world to arrive, try remembering the skinny little six-year old sitting in the corner of her first grade classroom. Don't be afraid to speak to students in languages they understand--even if that means writing in a math classroom.

Deductive Vs. Inductive Reasoning

The spring semester has brought with it new challenges for us writing center consultants. Aside from trying to stay healthy during a merciless flu season, many of us are moving to the classroom as teaching apprentices. A couple weeks ago, I discovered, during two separate conversations with two different colleagues, that they would soon be giving a lecture explaining the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning.  

After discussing with each colleague his/her teaching strategy, I asked myself how I might distinguish deductive reasoning from inductive reasoning, then I asked myself how I might give this information to a freshman composition student. This blog post will be the abbreviated version of my cerebral labors. 

Let me begin by asking you a question: What can you conclude from the following two premises?
1. All men are mortal.
2. Socrates is a man. 

I would imagine many of you have seen these two premises before. Lots of introductory philosophy or critical reasoning books include this example to illustrate the features of a valid chain of deductive reasoning.

Now if we assume that (1) and (2) are true, we can conclude--conclude without any doubt, without any qualification the following:

3. Socrates is mortal. 

Part of what makes deductive reasoning distinct from inductive reasoning is that first premise. How many men does it say are mortal? All of them. And given the fact that (1) and (2) are related to each other in a specific linguistic way, and given the fact that we are assuming both to be true, the conclusion is guaranteed to be true. In other words, if (1) and (2) are true, then it is impossible for (3) to be false. In a world full of doubt and uncertainty, a sound deductive argument is a bastion of knowledge. 

Other kinds of deductive reasoning move from some universal statement to a particular one. The valid forms of such reasoning chains would be called syllogisms.   

Here is another example:
4. No book on my shelf has a pinstriped cover.
5. Catch-22 is a book on my shelf.

Therefore,  
6. Catch-22 does not have a pinstriped cover. 

(6) is entailed by (4) and (5).  Part of what makes this chain of reasoning deductive is the content of (4).  How many books on my shelf have a pinstriped cover? That's right, none of them.  To show how (1) and (4) effect the nature of the reasoning chain lets slight modify these two examples. 

1* 99 percent of men are mortal.
2* Socrates is a man.

Now if we assume that both 1* and 2* are true, what can we conclude? Or maybe the better question is to ask, what can't we conclude?  

Because 1* is probabilistic, because it leaves that 1%  of men floating around who could be immortal, even if both 1* and 2* are true, we would not be able to conclude, for certain, that "Socrates is mortal."  

Instead, what we could cogently conclude would be something like, "It is very very probable that Socrates is mortal." Or maybe, to express the same basic idea in a different way, we could conclude, "Any rational person would believe that Socrates is, in fact, mortal."   Even if both 1* and 2* are true, the conclusion "Socrates is mortal" might still be false, thus this chain of reasoning would not be deductive. 

Let's look at our second modified argument:

4*Out of 250 books on my shelf 249 do not have a pinstriped cover. 
5*Catch-22 is a book on my shelf. 

4* gives information about the number of books on my shelf--I have 250 books on my shelf. 

4* also gives information about a characteristic that 249 of the books do not possess--a pinstriped cover.  

But even if 4* and 5* are true, it is still possible that 6* "Catch-22 does not have a pinstriped cover" is false. Maybe it's the one book that actually has a pinstriped cover. For those of you who believe that you've seen the cover of Catch-22 and know that it doesn't have a pinstriped cover, my edition is very special. So special, in fact, there is only one in existence. Since it's so special, I've never shown it to anyone, thus no one, at least no one who hasn't had some supernatural assistance, could possibly know about the features of its cover.     

Just like in the other example, most of us would believe, given the truth of 4* and 5*  that Catch-22 does not have a pinstriped cover" is true, but since the truth of the premises do not guarantee the truth of the conclusion, it would be an inductive chain of reasoning, not a deductive one. 

To sum up some of what I've tried to illustrate with the above examples, a chain of deductive reasoning includes a couple of key features that are distinct from a chain of inductive reasoning. The first one is that, in a deductive chain of reasoning, if the premises are true, then the conclusion must also be true. A chain of inductive reasoning does not, even if its premises are true, entail the conclusion. The second one is that all the valid syllogistic forms (all of which contain a universal modifier like All or No) use a deductive chain of reasoning to draw their conclusions. 

If you see a valid argument that contains only premises that itself includes either the term All or No, without some qualifying distinction, (For example, in the following proposition: All the penguins that have ever been seen by human beings..., the part in bold print qualifies the All), then it will be using a deductive chain of reasoning.  

On the other hand, an inductive  chain of reasoning will base its premises on a series of observations that will always fall short of universality. It's for this reason that, powerful as it may be, the scientific method only generates conclusions through a chain of reasoning that is inductive. Because a set of data collected by human observation will always be qualified by the natural limitations of either human faculties or the instruments we create, the conclusions generated by the scientific method are always inductive. 

Induction and deduction are both essential ways of reasoning.  In all honesty, we would be lost without either one.